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We Needed A Win – Crazy Favor & Grace

For anyone who is close to Dave or I, you know the last month and a half has been a little stressful.

OK, that’s an understatement.

I knew there would be parts of marriage that would be an uphill climb, but I didn’t think we’d have such a fight just to even get there! At least we’re both in agreement, so there’s that. Here’s a quick rundown of the hurdles we’ve had to jump over.

Every date we chose didn’t work for some reason. Be it conferences at our church (we can’t exactly take church leadership away for a night when they’re supposed to be hosting something), birthday parties, graduation parties, other weddings, very expensive plane tickets (we have bridal party coming from as far as Florida and Hawaii), Marios (our minister) being out of the country. The list goes on. There were times we thought we could move forward with a date and put it out there to everyone only to have it explode in our faces.

We almost settled for a date and location – but it was just that, settling. And we knew we wouldn’t be happy.

We almost had a great location – but the place wasn’t available the ONLY day this year we can get married. That’s not an exaggeration, we literally have one day left if we want to get married in 2015. We have exhausted every other option.

The first time I went to try on dresses I thought the place started at $99. Nope. False advertising. They started at $1200. WHAT?! Thank God I didn’t fall in love with any of them.

Granted, that doesn’t seem like much when it’s written out, but holy crap. The amount of screaming, tears, and almost throwing up from it all was ridiculous. We weren’t trying to cater to EVERYONE, but Marios, immediate family and bridal party (you know, the essentials) all needed to make it work. Nothing but dead ends around every corner. I was totally defeated and ready to give up and just let someone else tell me where and when to get married.

That brings us to last night…

I had an appointment at David’s Bridal at 6pm so I picked my mom up after work and we headed up to meet My Julie and Christine there. They were smart, they looked up the address; I went by memory and was totally off. By my calculations we were going to be 10 minutes early and my mom would be able to look at some dresses for herself before the appointment. Wrong.

We get to where I thought it was and there was no D’s B. Great. I look up the address in my email and see I’m in the wrong town. Ugh. I pull up the email and click the link for the address and see we’re 20 minutes away. Ok, no big deal, we’ll be 10 minutes late instead of 10 minutes early. This is ok.

No, that was wrong.

We start driving and I said to myself “nice try devil, you’re gonna have to try harder than that to kill this night” which I shouldn’t have. Because when I got there…again…I wasn’t there.

“You have arrived…” um no, I’m at someone’s house, Siri!

Crap.

This time I type in the WHOLE address and and we’re 40 minutes out. 40!

I called David’s and they were so nice. They told me I was the last appointment, that they closed at 9pm and once I got there I’d basically have the place to myself. To not worry about it. Sweet!

So we FINALLY arrive at almost 7pm (after driving the complete ass-backwards way of getting there, mind you) and My Julie and Christine are waiting for us. They wound up having an impromptu date at Sonic, so the time wasn’t all lost for them.

They’re ready for me, but ut oh, they can’t access the dresses I favorited on their site. And neither can I. Ugh. So the 3 of us (my mom was looking for her dress) were set loose on the racks to pick out some dresses.

Because that’s not overwhelming.

I tried on a total of 4 dresses but knew after the 2nd I was sold. When you don’t want to take the dress off, you know it’s the dress. And a little fun fact: the dress wasn’t even on my “favorites” list! Who knows if I would’ve found it if I went with what I had.

And when I finally DID take it off, Many the Miles by Sara Bareilles was playing. Perfect!

Red letter day and I’m in a blue mood
Wishing that blue would just carry me away
I’ve been talking to God don’t know
If it’s helping or not
But surely something has got to got to got to give
Cause I can’t keep waiting to live

How far do I have to go to get to you
Many the miles
Send me the miles and I’ll be happy to

Here’s where the crazy favor comes in.

This dress was usually $1000. It was on clearance for $750. If they ordered it, it would come in THE LATEST by August 31st…which would leave me 11 days for alterations. Uh…no. No thank you. If I bought it right then and there, I would pay $650.

Now, while I was taking the dress off I noticed a snag in it. I’m convinced the Lord highlighted it for me because there’s no way you could see it if you weren’t looking for it and knew exactly where to look. SO, they gave me an additional 20% off! The total for my dress came out to $560!

THEN my mom found the dress she wanted. It was usually $200-something but was on sale for $150. She brought it to the register and it rang up at $50! But I’m not done! Because I bought MY dress there, she got an additional discount and wound up only paying $31!!!

You guys! We walked out of David’s Bridal with a wedding dress and a Mother of the Bride dress for a total of less than $600!

That’s Crazy!

And the girl who helped me? Her name was Grace. Boy did I need it, and boy did she deliver.